Monday, June 03, 2013

“We would like to offer our sincerest apologies to our readers for the egregious unprofessionalism of our recent slideshow ‘10 Llamas Who Wish They Were Models,’” BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith wrote in a press statement Wednesday. “The unauthorized reproduction of proprietary llama photographs and the plagiarism of captions and emoticons by former employee Tim Mills represented a breach of BuzzFeed’s stringent journalistic standards and an inexcusable violation of our readers’ trust. As of today, Mills no longer works for this company.”

“We have added additional checks and reviews to ensure that BuzzFeed continues to provide only the highest quality slideshows of animals riding on top of other animals, animated GIFs of people dancing poorly, and compilations of the best celebrity tweets from Verne Troyer, Bob Saget, and others,” Smith continued. “Our users deserve nothing less.”